The new paradigm

U.S. Economic Growth at 21-Month Low

“Are you cut out to live a lie? If you don’t mind skulking around, leading a double life and constantly having to look over your shoulder to make sure you don’t get found out, you may have just what it takes.” ~ How to Live a Lie (eHow.com)

As I pointed out in War on Wealth, Part II | Keeping Our Foot on the Gas, Barack Obama, the unopposed Democratic presidential nominee, has been out on the campaign trail spreading the following wildly inaccurate cliff-hangers. He says, “Manufacturing is coming back. Companies are starting to bring jobs back. The economy is getting stronger. The recovery is speeding up. We’re moving in the right direction. And now we have to do everything in our power to keep our foot on the gas.”

But according to the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), the same crew that predicted the last recession, U.S. economic growth is at a 21-month low, and we are heading straight into another recession, this year, in 2012.

ECRI is a private forecasting firm based in Manhattan which was founded by Geoffrey H. Moore, the economist who helped originate the practice of using leading indicators to predict business cycles. Over the last 15 years, ECRI has gotten all of its recession calls right, while issuing no false alarms.

In the institute’s view, the United States, which under the leadership of Barack Obama has failed to recover from the last downturn, is currently plummeting into a new one. On September 30, 2011, Lakshman Achuthan, the institute’s chief operations officer, said,” If the United States isn’t already in a recession now it’s about to enter one.” Mr. Achuthan maintains this position to this day. Here he is in a February 24, 2012 interview on CNBC:

In fact, if you carefully study the table below, courtesy of the National Bureau of Economic Research, what should stand out is the fact that, ever since 1945, the United States has averaged an economic recession once every 59-month’s. Therefore, it is logical to infer that since the last recession began in December of 2007, the next recession should be arriving by November of 2012.

After the way Mr. Obama has divided and driven the federal government and our nation into the ground over the last 37 month’s, can you imagine how he would act under the duress of a self-imposed recession? More bailouts, never-ending stimulus, trillions more in crushing debt, bigger deficits, numberless regulations, higher taxes, continued covering of his tracks with a vast array of alibis and excuses, and more lies. Oops! Did I say lies?

It’s been real though, I mean the loss of almost a million manufacturing jobs since 2008; the decline in economic growth from a peak annual rate of 3.0% in 2010, to just 1.7% in 2011; the national debt as a percentage of GDP skyrocketing from 69.9% in 2008 to 104.8% in 2012, and projected to reach 107.8% by 2014; and lest we forget, gasoline prices rising from an average price of $1.61 in the week ending December 29, 2008, to $3.79 as of the week ending March 5, 2012. However, anyone who’s still considering Mr. Obama’s re-election should take the time to study not only ECRI’s economic indices, but also the eHow.com article, “How to Live a Lie” – because if you still believe in Obama there’s no sense in beating around the Bush.